


Like Mad

by shootingstarcipher



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Dark, M/M, Masturbation, Self-Harm, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 09:59:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10511469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shootingstarcipher/pseuds/shootingstarcipher
Summary: He didn’t belong there, no matter what any of them said. And Mabel… Even she wouldn’t believe him. She hadn’t done for years. She said he was sick, that he needed help, that she didn’t remember any of what he claimed had happened to them. He’d had enough of it all. And that’s why one day, they burst into his cell to find only a torn-out page from an old journal in his place.





	

That noise… A blaring siren that attacked his senses every goddamn morning, always with the same result – a unbearable feeling of grogginess and a throbbing headache that made him wish more than ever for his life in there to end. And sometimes, on particularly bad days, he wished his life would end altogether. This was to be expected from most individuals in his position but for Dipper Pines it was a completely foreign experience, at least until those particularly bad days stopped cropping up once or twice a month and started to take over his life entirely. Now every day was a particularly bad day.

And those particularly bad days had gotten even worse over the last few weeks. Now that his sister was no longer visiting him every day like she used to – he knew it was because of school work and not because she’d stopped caring about him, but the idea that they were growing apart was too compelling to ignore – loneliness and isolation were well on their way to consuming him. It was no surprise that his dreams were plagued with the demons of his past, taunting him, reminding him they would always be there. In his mind, they were all he really had.

Nobody believed a word of what he said. There were no such things as demons, they told him. There were no such things as ghosts or monsters either, or journals that told of the details of those mystical beings. It was all just a story. It was all in his head. And his head felt as though it were about to explode.

The siren didn’t help.

His eyes were practically glued shut and every muscle in his weak, slender body insisted on him refusing to get up. He did as they instructed until another command came along, this time in the form of a pair of iron fists banging against the metal door beside him. At this point he yawned, forced his eyes to peel themselves open, and stood, leaving the intolerably uncomfortable bed behind and stepping onto the even harder, even less comfortable floor. As per usual, a hatch opened at the bottom of the door and a voice called out to him, though he never did manage to catch what it was saying. Then, at his feet appeared a bowl of grey, ambiguous sludge that didn’t smell as putrid as it looked but certainly wasn’t pleasant. Breakfast. He sniffed at it and then gulped. The hatch swung shut with an almost silent clang.

During the first few months of his time there he had eaten every last mouthful of whatever food the nurses put in front of him, simply out of hunger and fear of what would happen should he ever refuse. Now he just poured it out behind his bed (making sure to save a small amount to purposely spill down the front of his clothes so as to continue the façade that he was eating it all) and cleaned it up when he was next given the chance.

That day, the chance never arose.

He would usually be let out of his room at some point during the afternoon to allow him to socialise with the other patients for a short while, though he hadn’t bothered to use that time for what it was meant for in over a year. But on that day, the monster no-one would believe existed came back to haunt him before he had even had the chance to croak out a word to one of the other patients.

He sat there in the corner of his room for hours, his usual morning routine automatically sending him into a series of virtually comatose episodes of crying and occasional screaming – the type of emotional outbursts nobody who had only known him before his incarceration would have expected from him. Only Mabel had witnessed him like this. Bloodshot eyes, reddened cheeks, tear-stained skin and hair that was halfway to be being pulled out by his fists. It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t him; well, it wasn’t the old him.

This was what Gravity Falls had turned him into. This was what Bill Cipher had turned him into. And worst of all, this was what his own family had turned him into.

Paranoia thrived within him and each night the ghosts of his past materialised as his nightmares, resurrecting themselves with every waking moment of his life. He lived in fear of the darkness that crept up the padded walls of his cell and into his mind, creating the nightmares he so desperately wanted to erase.

He scratched hard at the back of his head, frantically trying to burrow his way into his brain. Maybe, if only he could find a way to reach it, he could remove those memories from within him once and for all. If only. If logic hadn’t deserted him a long time ago, then the voice of reason would have told him how absurd he was being. But it had and so the voice of reason fell deaf on his ears. 

When he eventually opened his eyes after squeezing them shut for nearly an hour, he caught sight of his one and only possession staring at him from across the room. On top of his small, much too firm bed, was a journal: Journal 3 – the very same journal that had got him locked up there in the first place, the one they had been unable to prize away from him since he’d recovered it from its hiding place.

Moving at a speed faster than he’d imagined himself able to achieve, he scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees and snatched the book from its place on the bed, hurling it across the floor in a sudden eruption of hatred and frustration. And which page should it fall open to as it landed, but the one he despised the very most? The one which tormented him in his dreams and taunted him in his waking life?

He scowled at it in derision, glaring with more callousness than a more innocent version of him would have thought possible. The image in the book stared back – ominous, unblinking and worst of all, mocking.

And then, it stopped staring. It blinked.

Colour flooded the image, the off-white triangle becoming completely golden within seconds. But the reddened cover of the book turned to grey, indicating the reality of Dipper’s greatest fear. Bill Cipher was returning.

“Only with your help, Pine Tree.” There it was. That disdainful, sadistic laughter. He never had been able to stand it. And that nickname, too, made his stomach churn. “That’s just the butterflies, kid. Don’t worry about it.” Dipper did nothing but blink, his gaze remaining fixed on the page the book had fallen open to.

“Why are you here?” he choked out eventually, gaze gradually lifting to meet with the demon’s scrutinising eye. He didn’t trust Bill one bit and never had – save for the time he had foolishly allowed himself to fall for one of the monster’s tricks. Bill’s proposals were always bad news and he doubted that he’d come from another universe just to exchange supposed pleasantries with him.

Apparently, he was right. “You got me there, kiddo,” the demon grinned with another blink (or wink, as it was difficult to tell with beings which only had one eye to call their own). “I didn’t come here just for a chat, although you are my favourite little mortal… You know that, don’t you?” He didn’t, but Bill didn’t pause long enough for Dipper to even think up an answer. “You don’t belong here,” he suddenly blurted out, making the mortal question the demons intentions yet again.

Dipper shook his head but stayed silent, eyeing the demon in suspicion. But you do, he answered inside his head, momentarily unaware of the monster’s ability to access his most private thoughts. And true to his strange, chaotic nature, Bill seemed to find an unsettling solace in the human’s unspoken words.

“Thank you,” he said as his eye squinted into a wide, disconcerting grin. It sounded so genuine that Dipper struggled to believe he had really said it. “And as for why I’m here… You don’t belong here, and I don’t belong where your uncle sent me. That place…” he trailed off and shuddered, though Dipper assumed it was more of a theatrical shudder than an expression of sincere distress. “I can get you out of here, kid.” He lowered his voice, floating closer to the mortal so that Dipper was forced to shuffle backwards and press himself up against the wall to avoid him.

After just a moment, things became clear. Making a deal with Bill Cipher was never a smart choice because they never really benefit whoever was agreeing to demon’s terms but, that being said, this time it seemed like Dipper really couldn’t lose. “Where would you take me?” he asked cautiously, wary of the demon’s aptitude for playing (and winning) the most sinister mind games. He would of course have preferred to be anywhere but the hospital he was confined to, but making a deal with a monster he had already learned first-hand not to trust seemed irresponsible. Still, they all thought he was crazy already. Why not play along?

“I like the wat you think.” A blush crept onto Dipper’s face as his cheeks turned a bright shade of pink. Compliments weren’t something he was used to hearing and so even one from a trickster like Bill Cipher was enough to create an aura of happiness and pride that had simply been absent for over a year. “Somewhere you feel at home,” Bill went on, elaborating on the terms of his proposal. “Not here, that’s for sure. Now, you know the drill, Pine Tree. All you have to do is shake my hand” – he held out his hand (a bit too close for Dipper’s comfort) and a small blue flame appeared above his palm – “and then you’ll have what you want and so will I. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?”

“And what exactly do you want?” Dipper growled in response, his teeth gritted and his hands coiled into fists.

“Just… a body.” Dipper raised an eyebrow; of course that was what he wanted. “Temporarily. I’ll give it back to you after twenty-four hours.”

Less than a minute later, Dipper swore he felt himself break.


End file.
